Application Of Needs Analysis To English For Specific Purpose

With the rapid developments of medical science, there has been an increasingly wide academic exchange and cooperation between domestic medical field and the world. The advancement of medical science requires medical practitioners to keep abreast of the most internationalized medical field. Under this circumstance, medical education becomes increasingly internationalized. Medical practitioners are required to do more things in English, such as being able to read medical literature, understand academic report, communicate and exchange ideas with foreign colleagues, write case report, prescription and essay in English, etc.Since1980s, in order to meet the increasing requirements of EMP, many medical colleges have tried to set up EMP courses for medical students. However, EMP teaching in many medical colleges is now in a dilemma For example, laying too more stress on general English teaching than EMP, lack qualified medical English teachers, unreasonable setting in curriculum, course structure lacks proper care, course content is outmoded. In addition, medical students are also in this dilemma. After learning two-year general English and one-year EMP, graduates take up their posts in medical field and they find they have great difficulty in using EMP, such as reading English medical literature, not to mention writing academic articles or a prescriptions in English.Based on the needs analysis framework of Hutchinson&Waters, this paper aims to discover the target needs and learning needs of English for medical practitioners and medical students respectively. Thus it could provide rich insights into the perceived needs as language users and help to explore the possible optimized medical English course design.The findings of this study revealed the fact that the majority of the subjects appreciated the importance of English in performing their job responsibilities or in their academic study. The using frequency varies from several different factors:age, the hospital level working department with different job designations and academic degrees. The frequency of EMP sub-skills at the workplace mostly ranges from depending on different communicative events. In general, the top three frequently-used EMP sub-skills for medical practitioners are:writing English abstracts for academic papers, reading medical literature in English and making presentation fluently in English, among of which, reading skill was considered as the most needed to be improved. As to the learning needs, majority of medical students were not satisfied with the present EMP teaching in their university.The results of the research highlighted the significance of EMP for the learners’ present and future needs and revealed the mismatch between learners’ expectations and the present situation, establishing the need for redesigning the EMP curriculum in an effective to meet the needs of the target group of learners.